Frankie Avalon brings his hits to Brookline for fundraiser

Wednesday

Oct 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2008 at 4:19 AM

Don’t expect to hear any songs that were written in the past 40 years when Frankie Avalon takes the stage at the annual Barry Price Center fundraiser this weekend in Brookline. The former teen idol still prefers the old over the new.

Ed Symkus

Don’t expect to hear any songs that were written in the past 40 years when Frankie Avalon takes the stage at the annual Barry Price Center fundraiser this weekend in Brookline. The former teen idol still prefers the old over the new.

“It’s a difficult task for me to listen to new music,” says Avalon, best known for his hit song “Venus,” and his screen partnership with Annette Funicello in a string of “Beach Party” movies. “Music is so diversified now, it’s very confusing to me. So I don’t listen to rock ’n’ roll. If I’m gonna listen to rock ’n’ roll, I’ll listen to my stuff and my friends.”

Those friends would be Bobby Darin, Paul Anka and Fabian, who also peppered the charts with hits in the 1950s and 1960s. The four of them used to travel on school buses, performing one-nighters across the country.

But Avalon had no intentions of becoming a singer when he first got into music. In his early teen years, he was playing trumpet in a number of bands in his Philadelphia neighborhood. One night, easy listening singer Al Martino happened to catch him, and was impressed.

“Al brought me to New York City to audition for a talent agency,” says Avalon. “And that agency was handling Jackie Gleason at the time. The agent I auditioned for said, ‘He plays great, and I know exactly where we should take him.’ So they brought me over to the Sheraton Hotel, where Jackie Gleason had a penthouse. I took out the horn and started playing, and Gleason came out of his bedroom and listened to me play. When I finished, he said, ‘Write a show, I want him on in two weeks.’ It happened that quick.”

Later, when Avalon was playing trumpet with a band called Rocco and the Saints, Rocco thought it would be a good idea to have more vocals, and asked Avalon to take a stab at singing.

“Soon it wound up being six or seven songs a night,” he says. “That was the start of it.”

Avalon tried recording a few songs, and even played Boston — performing at the old Mechanics Hall — to promote an early nonhit called “Cupid Shot an Arrow.”

“I didn’t even get paid for that appearance,” he recalls, laughing. “I guess I was about 17.”

It wasn’t till he recorded the hit “De De Dinah” in 1958 that he made the national charts, came to the attention of Dick Clark and his star-making show “American Bandstand,” and his career took off.

But big-time popularity would only last a few years. The Beatles were about to change everything.

“The sound was different, the look was different,” says Avalon. “But what came at the right time for me was ‘Beach Party.’ It was perfect because I got into this whole other genre of being able to sing and being able to have fun on the screen. It was a wonderful experience.”

There were eventually seven “Beach Party”-related films, most of them made for about $350,000 and shot in two weeks, most of them pulling in about $12 million at the box office.

Avalon, who had no acting training, and was usually playing versions of himself in those squeaky-clean films, began to get different kinds of scripts, and eventually started studying in New York and Los Angeles to learn the craft.

He had quite a bit of success in a part that he initially turned down: the role of teen Angel in “Grease.”

“I had seen the play on Broadway and liked it very much,” he says. “About five years later, my manager said that Paramount wanted me for a role in the movie. He said it was for Teen Angel, and I said, ‘No Chance.’

“I recalled that in the play he came swinging in on a rope and dropped down wearing black leather pants and jacket with sideburns, almost like an Elvis,” he adds. “So I said no, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. I did go to speak with them and told them that I had a style, that I don’t sing doo-wop stuff, that I sing straight-ahead little romantic songs. They said, ‘OK, we’ll change it.’ And they did.”

But Avalon, now 69, is still scratching is head over an early-’80s film called “Blood Song,” in which he played, very much against type, a cold-blooded killer.

“When I was offered that picture, I read it and thought it was interesting — and kind of a reach for me to play as an actor,” he says. “When I met with the director, I said, ‘Excuse, me, why would you want someone like me, who has had this screen image for all these years, to play this part?’ His comeback was that there’s nothing more frightening than someone who is the killer that you don’t expect. That kind of convinced me, but the picture came out and it didn’t do very well. Who knows why.”

But Avalon still makes plenty of concert appearances, singing “Venus” and “High School Dropout” and “Ginger Bread” and other hits. And he seems rather proud of the fact that he sort of lives in the past.

He calls the current “High School Musical” series of films a little more sophisticated than the ones he was making with Annette, and insists that they’re just the right thing for young audiences.

“I think the kids in them are talented,” he says, adding that “this kind of thing had to come around again. The reason the ’50s has stayed on so long now is because kids love the feeling of that innocence. I think they would love to have that; they would love to go on a date with a kid who comes to the house and knocks on the door and makes sure his shoes are polished and opens the door for the gal and goes to the movies or has a slice of pizza. Those were wonderful times.”

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